


but home life doesn't change

by coffeesuperhero



Series: Family Pond 'verse [6]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-30
Updated: 2011-10-30
Packaged: 2017-10-26 16:16:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero/pseuds/coffeesuperhero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><b>Disclaimers</b>:  This isn't for profit, just for fun. All characters & situations belong to Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffat, BBC, and their various subsidiaries. Title from a song by John Mayer, which I also had nothing to do with.<br/></p>
    </blockquote>





	but home life doesn't change

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimers** : This isn't for profit, just for fun. All characters & situations belong to Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffat, BBC, and their various subsidiaries. Title from a song by John Mayer, which I also had nothing to do with.  
> 

She wakes with a start, the unmistakable noise of the TARDIS still ringing in her ears. For a moment, she thinks it was just another dream, but she can see the familiar glow of the police box light through the bedroom window.

"Mickey," she says, shaking her husband awake. She's amazed he could sleep through this, but it has been quite a long few days, what with the Atraxi kerfuffle and the Sontarans and other various snafus, so she supposes it's to be expected.

"Huh?"

"We've got company," Martha tells him, and he groans when he sees the light outside.

"He's got a bloody time machine," Mickey swears, sitting up slowly, rubbing his face. "Can't he ever visit anyone at a decent hour?"

They look in on their children, who are thankfully still asleep, and then Mickey puts the kettle on while Martha tugs on a bathrobe and runs outside to knock on the TARDIS door. She's not sure what she's expecting, exactly. With the Doctor, it could be anything from the impending end of the universe to a lecture on UNIT's most recent cock-up.

With the week they've had, she's really hoping it's the former.

"Doctor Martha Jones, look at you!" says the Doctor, clambering out of the TARDIS.

"Oh my god, your face," she says, and he slaps a hand to his cheek.

"What? Has it gone wrong again? There was a bit after the visit to the two-dimensional planet when it felt a bit off, but it's been right now for weeks," he says, both hands nervously palming his own face.

"No, no," she says, and she can't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of him, no matter his face. Same old ridiculous Doctor. "It's just... _different_. That's all."

"Oh! Yes, that," he says dismissively. "Well. It happens, from time to time. I believe I mentioned it, possibly? Still not ginger, but there is always the next go-round."

She squints at him, surveying his get-up in the half-light. "Is that a bow tie?"

"Yes. I wear a bow tie now," he says defensively, adjusting the item in question. "Bow ties are cool."

"Same old Doctor," Mickey says, quietly closing their front door as he steps toward the TARDIS.

"Same old Mickey!" the Doctor cries, kissing him on both cheeks. "Love the beard, by the way. Bit scratchy, but very dignified. Very cool."

"So what is it this time?" Martha asks. "World ending? Universe about to explode?"

"Martha Jones, I'm hurt," the Doctor replies, hands over both his hearts. "Can't I just pop 'round for tea? Catch up with old friends?"

"You can," she says, arms crossed, "but you don't."

"Been a bit busy rebooting the universe," he protests, waving his arms about. "And then ending the universe. Well, ending _a_ universe, it wasn't the right one, don't worry, long story. But here I am! Visiting you! Doctor Martha and Mickey Jones, heroes of Earth, with a lovely house, nice cars, and, if I'm not mistaken, several children. We have been busy, haven't we?"

"Jones," Mickey says, shaking his head. "That's not how it works."

"Yeah, it is," the Doctor says, grinning at them, and Mickey laughs.

"Yeah, it is," he agrees, and pushes the door open. "Come on in, then. I've made tea, but try and keep the end-of-the-world stuff down, all right? The kids have got exams tomorrow."

"Same old Doctor," Martha says, watching him poke about in their kitchen, scanning this and that with his sonic screwdriver and muttering contentedly to himself all the while.

"Yes and no," Mickey points out, and Martha smiles at him.

"Happy endings all around, maybe," she says. "Let's see what he needs, then."

\+ + + +

A few days later, Martha meets Amy in a coffee shoppe around the corner from Amy's company.

"Adoption papers, and, for when she's older, immunization records," Martha says, handing Amy a thick envelope. "Completely fake, of course, but you'll be able to enroll her in school and all with no trouble. And don't worry: if anyone starts poking around where they shouldn't, I'll know, and I'll call him. Count on it."

"Thank you," Amy says.

"It's no problem. I've got kids of my own," Martha tells her. She looks Amy over and frowns.

"What is it?"

"Nothing, it's just... the Doctor, he didn't really explain what was going on, with you and your husband and this little girl," Martha says, and Amy shrugs. "Let me guess. Wibbly wobbly--"

"Timey wimey," Amy finishes, and they both laugh. "You traveled with him too, yeah?"

"Yeah," Martha says, sighing. "Feels like it was a hundred years ago."

"Bet you've got some stories," Amy says, eyes bright, and Martha grins.

"How much time have you got?"

They stay in the coffeeshoppe the sun goes down, reminiscing, talking about their amazing adventures and the less-than amazing fallout of those adventures.

"I was all set to have a different life entirely," Martha says, gazing thoughtfully out the window of the shop like she's looking out over the past several years of her life, all its possibilities lining up before her. "Had a fiance, Tom. Met him in a year that never really happened and had to find him and fall in love with him all over again. Long story."

"Been there," Amy says, shaking her head. "Done that, had to rebuild part of reality with the power of my memories. So, what happened to Tom?"

"I broke it off," Martha sighs. "I think it might have worked, you know? If he could have remembered everything that happened that year. But he didn't, and he didn't know the Doctor, and he didn't know what it was like to fight for your life, and then there was Mickey. And he did. And we were both working for UNIT, and after work sometimes we'd have a drink, or more than one drink, and we'd talk about all of it, and then after awhile we stopped talking about the Doctor and we started talking about ourselves." Martha smiles, then, and it's the kind of smile that Amy recognizes as the same kind that curves her own lips when she thinks of Rory. "So here we are, three kids later. Making a go of it."

"And really, there's nothing quite like post-disaster-we-nearly-died sex, is there," Amy says, grinning, and Martha laughs.

"Tell me about it," she says. "There was this thing with the Sontarans, a few months after we both left the Doctor again, and we came so close to not making it, but we got out, and, well. You understand."

"First time? After the fish vampires in Venice," Amy says, and Martha's mouth falls open. "Did I mention that he gave us _bunkbeds_ on the TARDIS?"

"Oh my god, of course he did," Martha laughs.

They meet up once a week, after that, or at least, they try. It's nice to have a friend who really understands, and soon enough Martha and Mickey are bringing their kids over for dinner with the Ponds, or Amy and Rory are bundling up the girls to go Christmas shopping with Martha and Mickey and their three boys. Their oldest, Tyler, is the same age as Aurora, and no one is surprised when he shyly asks her if she'd like to go and see a film some weekend.

"When did our lives get so normal?" Amy asks Rory late one evening after drinks with Martha and Mickey. "Not that I'm complaining, mind."

Rory kisses her forehead. "We have an adopted daughter who is really our alien granddaughter, and our best friends are a couple who met because they both travelled around time and space with our son-in-law. So. _Who's normal_?"

She grins at him. "I love you, Rory Williams."

\+ + + +

Raising a child who is also a Time Lady is not without its share of _unusual_ trials. When Brook is seven, Rory turns his back for one minute to flip some pancakes, and when he looks around, she's nowhere to be found. He's on the verge of phoning Martha at UNIT when he hears a strange sound coming from the roof.

"Oh, no. Surely not," he says, but there she is, perched on the ridgepole, tinkering with the satellite dish. "What are you doing up here?"

"That," she says, pointing to the yard.

"What...?" Rory begins, but then there's a familiar whooshing and the TARDIS blinks into existence, nestled carefully underneath a tree.

"Hello!" the Doctor calls, poking his head out of the door. "Why have you reconfigured the satellite dish into an intergalactic multidimensional communicator?"

"You didn't answer your phone," she says, shrugging.

"You might have tried psychic paper," he suggests. He steps all the way out of the TARDIS, finally, and points his sonic screwdriver in their direction. "I'm sure I left some with your grandparents."

Brook giggles. "You said, 'For emergencies only!' I was following the rules. And this way was more fun."

"Right," Rory interrupts. "Might it be possible to have this conversation somewhere that isn't on the roof?"

"Excellent idea, Rory," says the Doctor. He squints up at them and at the satellite dish. "Though, you might ask her to undo whatever it is she's done while you're up there, unless you're keen on receiving intergalactic transmissions from any ship that happens to be passing within fifty-thousand light years of Earth. I can't imagine what the bill would look like."

"Brook," Rory sighs, and she beams over at him.

"Sorry, granddad," she says.

\+ + + +  
On a sunny day shortly after Brook's eleventh birthday, River borrows her daughter for the afternoon.

"If you're going to go travelling around the universe with your father some day, then you're going to know how to defend yourself." Her mother looks curiously at her for a moment. "What in the name of sanity have you got on your head?"

"It's a fedora, like the one Harrison Ford wears, in those Indiana Jones films," Brook says, her hands protectively encircling the brim of the hat. "It is my very favorite hat. Aurora got it for me while she was on holiday last month. She said it was _cool_."

"Of course she did," River says, and makes a mental note to have a chat with her little sister when they return to England.

  
\+ + + +

The following Christmas, River gives Aurora an enormous hat, the latest trend in twenty-first century fashion. It explodes into a harmless cascade of streamers and candies when she puts it on her head.

"Oooh, it's like a Christmas cracker!" Brooks shouts, grabbing for the paper crown that had popped out of the hat. She settles it on her head. "Cool."

"A hat inside a hat," the Doctor says cheerfully. "Good work."

"What was that for?" Aurora demands, but she catches on quickly enough, remembering the collection of hats she has made a habit of sending her niece. "Oh. Well. They have all been cool hats, River."

River raises her eyebrows at her sister. "In what century?"

"This one," Aurora says emphatically, picking bits of streamer from her hair.

"This is all because you read my diary," River accuses.

"I think it's because your hair's too big to accommodate hats so you have to take it out on the rest of us who can," Aurora retorts.

"I could wear a hat if I wanted," River tells her.

"Prove it!"

"Sisters," Rory says, his voice full of quiet and affectionate paternal exasperation, and Amy smiles.

"Pond girls," she says, and reaches for his hand.


End file.
